I had business in Hattiesburg one recent afternoon, so I took the opportunity to get outdoors — in this case, the Longleaf Trace.
The 41-mile paved pathway runs from Hattiesburg to Prentiss along an old rail line and is popular with hikers, joggers and bicyclists. I’ve hiked parts near Prentiss but not at Hattiesburg, so this was a good time to try it out — other than the fact that the heat index was over 100 degrees.
I finished my business at 4:30 p.m. and met my buddy Scott B. Williams of Prentiss at Compadres Taqueria & Grill downtown. Scott has traveled extensively in Latin America, and this is his favorite eatery in Hattiesburg.
The menu was scrawled in Spanish on a chalkboard. I took Scott’s recommendation and ordered a plate of soft tacos. Each was made of two folded soft corn tortillas stuffed with chunks of steak, chopped onion and lots of fresh green cilantro, with three bowls of sauce on the side.
The meal reminded me of one we had in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, back in the 1990s. We had just returned from the Mosquitia jungles and I was depleted from an attack of malaria. The parasites devour your red blood corpuscles, which made me crave red meat, so I ordered “biftek” (beefsteak). It was thin and tough but it hit the spot and helped restore my strength.
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Finishing up at Compadres, we drove out to the Jackson Road Station entrance on the Longleaf Trace. It’s on the west side of town north of Highway 98 (where a sign points the way).
The small parking area was crowded with vehicles. People strolled, jogged, bicycled and walked leashed dogs down the shady path. This was the cool of the evening now: The heat index had dipped below 100.
We headed away from town. The trail, completed in 2000, runs northwest from Hattiesburg. We walked maybe a half mile, then veered off to the left on a dirt path into the pines.
Scott said the University of Southern Mississippi owns this tract, and it’s laced with footpaths.
Scott has hiked and biked all of the Longleaf Trace, so I just followed him as the trail meandered up and down through open piney woods.
At one point he stopped and said, “I thought I was in Mosquitia for a minute there.”
Another Honduras flashback.
On one of our trips to Mosquitia, we canoed the Coco River with Miskito Indians, then hiked miles through pine savannah that looked much like this. But on that hike we took care to step where the guides walked since there were still land mines from the Sandinista-Contra conflict of the late 1980s.
No land mines here, hopefully.
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Unmarked trails branched off in every direction. I figured Scott knew where he was going, or hoped he did anyway. It’s always risky to put yourself at the mercy of a guide.
But Scott proved to be a good one. Besides, with the trail to our north and roads to the south, west and east, getting seriously lost wasn’t likely. Dying of heatstroke, maybe.
A cluster of colored arrows on a tree pointed in different directions. One of them said, “Death Valley.” Seemed appropriate.
We came out onto the grassy levee of a lake bordering a subdivision. We normally would have sat down to enjoy the view, but the heat drove us back into the forest shade.
We made it back to the paved track and crossed over to the north, following a parallel dirt path through the woods. We paused to sit on a small wooden bridge over a stream gushing out of a culvert. I was tempted to jump in.
But we rallied and hiked on back to the east, returning to the Trace and then to our vehicles. We had hiked an hour and a half and sweated gallons. We sat on my tailgate cooling off, sort of, as other sweat-soaked people walked, jogged and pedaled past.
Scott said there’s been talk of extending the Trace from Prentiss west to Natchez. Now that would be an adventure. But I think I’d prefer to do it in cooler weather.
